Sunday, November 8, 2015

"Literacy With An Attitude" Argument

Patrick Finn argues that schools in different economic standings teach their students how to thrive in the society that they already live in. He argues that there are four different kinds of students in schools are: working-class, middle-class, affluent professional, and executive elite children. As a teacher in working-class schools, Finn prospered because he was able to control his class and move up the ranks to get higher leveled classes. Although this originally made him happy, until he realized the issues holding back the students from learning how to really thrive in society past their working-class upbringing. The basis of his argument reminds me of Nicholas Kristoff who discusses the idea of living in a certain class usually makes you unable to move up within society because you are not taught the rules and codes to. Working-class students learn how to follow directions and do work that basically turns into them robots. Basically, they turn into people who work in dead-end jobs. Middle-class students learn through their textbooks and teachers that follow the curriculum based on experts. In the end, they learn how to work blue and white collar jobs through following orders. Affluent professional students had teachers from somewhere in the state and were taught the importance of creativity and development. This leads to a future of creating art and finding self importance within work. Finally, in executive elite schools, students were taught difficult concepts, how to reason, and how to problem solve. Logic is praised and students are taught to take more responsibility for their actions. These executive elite students are in turn taught to be leaders and society and learn how to shape the society they were born in. That's just like Delpit's rules and codes of power, these top elite students are taught how to be leaders in their society and in turn, know how to thrive in society. It reminded of this political cartoon that I've been seeing for years. I know, it's not exactly what Finn is talking about with the different classes in schools. But, it's more about the idea of the system not accommodating to certain disadvantages and advantages of the students in the system. They also don't learn how to get past the disadvantages in the system and are forced to say at the level they are on.